Strangely, a series of events in my life over the past few months have been taking quite similar a shape, to the stories that I read in the books just before those events happened. It started with Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh. I ignored the coincidence, considering it a one-off, thinking that Uma Saraswati and Moraes Zogoiby cannot happen in real life.
The next one was spooky. I finished God’s Little Soldier, by Kiran Nagarkar, which revolves around the life of a scholar-turned-Jihadi. A week later, I was standing right outside The Trident, witnessing 40 hours out of the 60-hour long siege, trying to get my clients evacuated out of the doomed hotel.
It will be about a month after the incident, but I still get flashbacks of the place. And now, there are some advocates of waging a war against Pakistan, while some stand at the other extreme. As if both these lot know what ensues if India exercises either of the two extremes!
Personally, I am not against a war for any humanitarian or secular reasons at all. But, considering the outcome of a military attack on a neighbouring country, which has huge disparities in itself, and breaking it up into pieces, it appears that India is likely to add quite a bit to its already heavy kitty of troubles.
On the other hand, it surprises me beyond limits that, citizens of a country which does not have enough cash to buy toilet paper to wipe off their arses are so keen to help out their neighbourhood in tackling its population problems. So much at the cost of their own lives! This degree of altruism is quite an outlier for my naïve comprehension.
Back to books! Next, I read Vikas Swaroop’s Q&A, the novel upon which the now famous film Slumdog Millionaire is based. A couple of days after I finished it, I find myself working with my clients at Dharavi, one of the largest slums of Asia! A small thing, but it was spooky enough to keep me thinking.
I have now picked up Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan. In Taleb’s words, the book talks of understanding the fact that, events which defy our expectations make the logic of ‘what you don’t know’ far more relevant that what you do know. I am curious to figure out what will happen after I finish this one!
More importantly, if something really spooky happens, which book should I pick up next?
Maqtoob!
